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the complete archive of music videos from iconic beijing-based rockers “new pants”

After nearly 15 years of performing, New Pants is still one of China’s best live acts. Every time the electro / punk / post-wave / pop / rock band comes through town, you can expect to see the NeochaEDGE team in attendance. We never tire of Fox Pang (Pang Kuan)‘s ridiculous dance routines or Millionaire Peng (Peng Lei)‘s front-man showmanship.

Beyond the band’s unique sound and creative on-stage antics, they are perhaps equally well known for their low-budget high-entertainment music videos, which we are huge fans of. Whether done in claymation, animation, spoof humor, or thick irony, they are all priceless.

It’s been a while since they’ve put one out, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to do everyone on the Internets a favor and organize them into a single post.

See below for a complete archive of New Pant’s music videos – from most awesome (top) to less awesome but still awesome (bottom) – most of which were directed by Peng Lei and the band themselves. Let us know if we missed any. Enjoy!

Which is your favorite?

Is New Pants the most legitimate / authentic / credible indie band in China?

Is Pang Kuan the most uncool, yet ironically cool, Chinese hipster out there?

To be honest, there really isn’t too much hype around them now-a-days outside of a very small niche. They had more a lot more buzz going for them about 5 years ago.

However, they’ve enjoyed pretty serious staying power / legitimacy in the local creative community (particularly Beijing) because they’ve been making music for so long and at the core of many other creative pursuits / movements in China. [Good on them.]

It’s difficult for non-Chinese (or those that didn’t grow up in urban 1980s in China, etc.) to truly get all the cultural references / humor in their music and performances / videos. And, if one doesn’t speak / understand Chinese (not sure if you do or not), then yeah, that person would likely be pretty bored at a New Pants show.

As for New Pants’ hipster cred, etc…these guys were (unintentionally) “hipsters” at least a decade before the movement got any legs in the States / elsewhere among middle-class urban kids zipping around on bikes that can peddle backwards.